Kaddish by Rainne
Title: Kaddish
Challenge: the Icon challenge. Challenge parameters here: http://community.livejournal.com/ncis_flashfic/107745.html
Icon:
Pairing: Gen
Rating: FRC/PG
Disclaimers: Recognizable characters do not belong to me.
Spoilers: Vague for at least season 4.
Feedback: Please!
Distribution: Ask first
Summary: Ziva David never met Caitlin Todd, but she dreams of the dead woman nearly every night.
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Eil malei rachamim sho-khein bam'romim, hamm-tzei m'nukhah n'khonah tahat kanfei ha-sh'khinah, b'ma-alot k'doshim u't'horim k'zohar ha’rakiya maz-hirim et nishmat Caitlin Todd sheh-halkhah l'olamah, b'gan eiden t'hei m'nuhatah. Ana, ba-al ha-rahamim, hassti-reha b'seiter k'nafekha l’olamim, u-tzror bi-tzror ha-hayim et nishmatah, Adonai hu nahalatah, v'tanu-ah b'shalom al mishkavah, v'nomar amen.

Ziva David is being haunted by the ghost of a woman she never met.

She never sees the ghost during her waking hours – or, perhaps she should amend that: she rarely sees the ghost during her waking hours. Occasionally the ghost is there in a photograph hanging in Abby’s lab, or one that occasionally shifts its way out from under the calendar on Tony’s desk. Occasionally it is there in the way Gibbs stares at her empty desk chair when she is not in it, and she knows that he is not seeing her but another woman who sat there before her. Occasionally it is in McGee’s sidelong glances, the ones that say louder than words could that Caitlin would never have said nor done such a thing as that which Ziva has just done.

All right, Ziva, admit the truth: the ghost surrounds you every minute of every day.

She has Caitlin Todd’s dossier, the one she put together for Ari before his undercover Hamas mission to retrieve the body of the terrorist Qassam. Sometimes, after a particularly ghost-filled day, she goes home and digs it out of her mattress and flips through it.

The dry facts are all there: Caitlin’s date of birth, the names of all the schools she ever attended, copies of her report cards and transcripts. There are pages on every job she has ever held, from her summer internship in a law office during high school to the Secret Service and to NCIS. There is a psychological profile describing Caitlin as a driven, perfectionist workaholic. The perfectionism is deduced to derive from her Catholic upbringing; the driven and workaholic parts simply part of her own unique nature.

There are also a number of photographs. One of them is from her NCIS identification. The others are all candid shots taken with long lenses by Mossad spies. There is Caitlin at a crime scene, talking to Gibbs; there is Caitlin walking her dog; there is Caitlin standing at the window of her apartment on a rainy afternoon, holding a mug of something warm and looking distant and thoughtful. There is a more recent addition: Caitlin, lying dead on an autopsy table with a hole in her forehead made by a Lapua 308 hand-loaded and moly-coated bullet.

When Ziva gets to this part of the folder she usually sighs in disgust at herself, shoves the folder under her pillow, rolls over and falls asleep in her clothes. This doesn’t help.

Ziva David never met Caitlin Todd, but she dreams of the dead woman nearly every night. The dreams are not nightmares, exactly, but they certainly cannot be classified as pleasant. Caitlin is always waiting when Ziva closes her eyes. Ziva can’t be sure, but she thinks that Caitlin chooses their location. Sometimes they are in a grayish sort of no-place; sometimes they are in a bar or a restaurant. Sometimes they are outside, in a park where Caitlin’s dog romps around at their feet. Once, they were in Gibbs’s basement, sitting together on the stairs and watching him work on his boat.

Ziva isn’t sure, but she thinks that night, they really were in his basement. In her dream, Gibbs hurt his hand with one of his tools; the next day at work, he had been wearing a bandage over the spot he had injured. Ziva had been slightly freaked out by that all day.

When Caitlin comes to her in her dreams, she simply talks to Ziva. She asks after the team, who were her friends, and who she now watches over as a sort of guardian angel. Ziva has been raised to respect the dead – it’s a big part of Jewish tradition – so she does not lie to spare the feelings of the deceased. She tells the truth. When things are good, she tells Caitlin. When things are bad, she tells Caitlin. When Gibbs was blown up and in the hospital with no memory of the previous fifteen years, she told Caitlin, and Caitlin was the one who told Ziva to go to the hospital and how best to jar his memory into returning.

She owes Caitlin Todd a debt which she will never be able to repay. Had she believed Gibbs in the beginning, had she believed or even been willing to entertain the notion that her brother Ari was capable of the things he proved himself capable of, Caitlin Todd would in all likelihood still live. That Caitlin’s death led to Ziva’s own new life is something that, in deeply reflective moments, is repugnant to Ziva. That she should have profited so greatly from the death of someone so beloved, from the pain of the people who have become so important to her since she came here, is unconscionable. There are days when Ziva hates herself.

Those are the nights when Caitlin comes to her not as the guardian angel of her former teammates, but as a friend to Ziva. She comes and she sits with Ziva, often in the living room of Ziva’s own apartment, and throws a companionable arm around Ziva’s shoulders and says, “You know what? There’s nothing you can do about it now. Let it go.” And Ziva cries on Caitlin’s shoulder, and often she wakes with her pillow wet with tears.

It is an odd feeling, to know that she is friends with a dead woman who visits her in her dreams. She has a feeling that if she told a psychologist, she would immediately be locked up for evaluation. She has a feeling that if she told a Rabbi, she would meet with a gentle smile of understanding. She has a feeling that it would be a very, very bad idea to tell anyone on her team. Of all of them, Abby might understand… if it were anyone but Caitlin, with whom she had been extremely close. If she told Abby, she feels sure, any nascent friendship she is developing with the lab tech would be immediately and irrevocably killed.

She tells no one.

But on the anniversary of Caitlin’s death, every year, she goes to the rooftop where Caitlin died (after everyone else has been, and she can be sure of not being seen) and kneels at the spot where Caitlin fell, a spot which is still (after two years of wind and sun and snow and rain) slightly stained with her blood, and sings Kaddish for the agent whose death opened up a whole new life for Ziva.
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Author’s note: The Hebrew prayer quoted at the beginning is EI Malei Rachamim, traditionally spoken at the graveside, and translated reads: God of compassion, grant perfect peace in Your sheltering Presence, among the holy and the pure who shine in the brightness of the firmament, to the soul of our dear Caitlin Todd who has gone to her eternal rest. God of compassion, remember all her worthy deeds in the land of the living. May her soul be bound up in the bond of everlasting life. May God be her inheritance. May she rest in peace. And let us answer: Amen.